fearless
by grassyhyuuga
Summary: It could be normal, the way they're sat on Gai's couch, their shoulders four and a half inches apart, their faces illuminated by the flickering of the television.
1. Chapter 1

Gai wakes to the stark smell of antiseptics. His body feels like a threadbare shirt, patched too many times and held together by only tatters and desperation. He probably looks like one, too.

He doesn't have to move his arms to know that they are shackled to the bed.

The medics don't take kindly to patients checking themselves out, and Gai will be the first to admit that he is a serial checker-outer, the kind of impatient patient who views ripping out his stitches as a character-building experience.

It's always the same, whenever he wakes up in the hospital. The ceilings — sickly green. The pillow — too soft. The food — bland and inadequate. The nurses — completely immune to his outbursts. Kakashi — in the corridor.

Gai can sense his chakra hovering outside, its serrated edges pulsing in time with the beeping of the heart monitor, as familiar as his own.

He doesn't come in.

Gai closes his eyes and lets himself rest. Just for a minute.

* * *

When they finally release him from the hospital, the first thing he does is run a hundred laps around the village.

The exercise calms him. He loves it, the way the ground and the people and the buildings blur into one long continuous streak of semi-awareness, the way his body sings with the punishing-freeing rhythm he always sets for himself.

Next, he picks up a six-pack of beer (chilled, of course) and heads to Kakashi's flat.

Four knocks, evenly spaced, enthusiastic, but not so enthusiastic that they threaten the structural integrity of the door.

Kakashi doesn't answer, though Gai knows he is in.

"It's me," he bellows, because, even if it's unnecessary, there are certain things people expect of Maito Gai. Being too loud is one of those things.

He hates being a disappointment in any context.

Kakashi makes him wait a few minutes, as if he's got anything to do in his empty one-room no-frills flat other than stare at the walls or read his books for the twelve-thousandth time. Then he comes to the door, his expression carefully arranged into vacant boredom and his visible eye hooded.

"Wanna come over?"

Silence.

"We can watch _Fearless_."

More silence.

He lifts the carton and holds the other man's gaze. "I got beer."

Kakashi looks away. "I'll get my keys."

He doesn't let Gai in when he goes to fetch them.

* * *

Gai chatters at him as they walk, remnants of sun bouncing off his bared teeth. Kakashi slouches. A casual observer would find nothing unusual, but Gai notices the way his head is tilted a fraction lower than normal, the sharp planes of his face catching more shadows than light.

In the orangey haze of dusk, his uncovered eye looks almost red.

* * *

It could be normal, the way they're sat on Gai's couch, their shoulders four and a half inches apart, their faces illuminated by the flickering of the television.

Gai almost chokes on his beer when some girl crunches down a dozen live tarantulas. The things people will do for money, or fame, never cease to surprise him.

Ten minutes later, the stunts have escalated. A man slams his forehead into solid slab of concrete. It splits down the middle, like two halves of an orange. The man shows off an addle-brained smile, even as blood dribbles down his face, and in a matter of seconds his teeth are stained red.

The crisp sound of crinkling metal tears Gai's attention from the screen.

Kakashi has crushed his can, and his expression is rigid, tunnel-eyed. "What an idiot," he murmurs, softly, as if to himself. "He could have died, and he doesn't even care."

Gai lets the silence stretch, breathing in the suddenly-taut air, breathing out the suddenly-taut air, before gesturing to the kitchen with his own can. "The bin's that way."

The other man swallows once, twice, his hands still clamped around the can like pincers, and he doesn't move. Doesn't seem able to unclench his jaw, to stand without snapping into angry, jagged pieces. After a minute, Gai leans in, unfurls his fingers one by one, lingering on the last, wanting to give, give reassurance, give affection, give Kakashi all the things he needs. He doesn't, though. Kakashi would never take, he never takes, and he will never allow himself to. So he only brushes Kakashi's shoulder with his free hand when he gets up to throw the can away.

By the time he's back, Kakashi is lounged into the softness of the couch, his eye mellowing slowly back to its usual inscrutable grey.

As he's done a million times before, Gai sinks into the cushions and flicks open another beer, wordlessly passing it to Kakashi before opening one for himself.

As he's done a million times before, he closes his eyes, shuts out the inconsequential people on the television screen, and allows himself a few seconds to be grateful that Kakashi would never ask him to promise to try not to die.

It's a mouthful of a promise, even heavier and weightier when written in the corded tendons of Kakashi's forearms or painted in Kakashi's dark eye.

Gai is sure of a lot of things in life — the power of determination, the spirit of youth, the importance of loyalty — but he isn't at all sure what he would say in the face of a plea like that.

Only Kakashi, or hypothetical-Kakashi, ever seems to be able to wring this kind of uncertainty from him. He can't decide if that makes him stronger or weaker.


	2. Chapter 2

Kakashi hates seeing Gai in the hospital.

(Kakashi also hates himself, almost all people, most places, and many things, usually in that order, but he might hate seeing Gai in the hospital the most.)

It's jarring to see him in white, _swathed_ in white, whites and pinks and reds and not a speck of green in sight. It's also jarring to see him _still_.

For most people, 'I'll sleep when I'm dead' is a pithy phrase, a smartassed quip.

For Gai, it's a life philosophy.

God, the man is absolutely ridiculous.

When he leans against the walls of hospital corridors, medical personnel giving him a wide berth as they come and go, he tells himself that he does not care whether Gai lives or dies.

The opposite is true. He never visits when Gai is conscious in the vain hope that the man will cave to the weak punishment, that he might decide to not be so stubbornly heroic and reckless with his own life.

That, and he doesn't know if he can pretend to be all right with this side of his friend — the side that would do such thorough damage to himself, and grin afterwards.

* * *

He always fully intends to ignore Gai when he comes knocking after he is discharged.

He ought to rest. He ought to leave Kakashi alone.

The only thing as terrifying as almost losing Gai is letting Gai see how terrified he had been. How terrified he still is. Because Gai hasn't changed at all. Gai will never change, no matter how many month-long stints he spends in the hospital, no matter how many times he charges head-first into lethal danger and comes out on the other side with only shreds of himself. Gai will always put others first.

Faced with the kind of moral conundrums that have occupied philosophers for millennia, he would choose his own death.

He would choose to let Kakashi grieve him.

It is at this point of his thought process when Kakashi usually opens the door to tell Gai to _fuck off_ and _get lost_ and other rude, pushing-others-away things that come so easily to him.

That requires, of course, actually coming face-to-face with the man — his stupid hair and his stupid teeth, his stupid earnestness and his stupid ability to appear healthy as a horse a month after breaking pretty much every single bone in his body.

They are beyond the point where Kakashi needs to pretend that he doesn't care.

(They are beyond the point where Kakashi _can_.)

"I'll get my keys."

He swallows the poison that he'd been intending to spew and closes the door. It burns him from the inside, and he shuts his eyes against the pain. He gives himself five seconds to remember what Gai had looked like in the hospital, his skin almost as pale as the bedsheets, doctors and nurses shaking their heads at the damage he'd done to himself.

Then he scowls the memories away, plunging them beneath the icy depths of his mind, and opens the door.

* * *

He listens to Gai's prattling with less than half an ear.

The setting sun fills the streets with a blurry golden glow, like a sepia photograph. Unbidden, Kakashi remembers the first time Gai had sent himself to the hospital.

(Muscle damage. Shattered knee. Shredded tendons. Pretty much every kind of trauma. Two weeks, five days, and about eighteen hours.)

"You're not your father," Kakashi had hissed, as if his words could slip between Gai's ribs and nick his heart sharply enough to make him listen. To make him _hurt_.

"I know." Gai hadn't smiled. Just looked at him with big, dark eyes that could have swallowed him whole. "I'm not your father, either."

* * *

Kakashi cannot enjoy the drivel on the television. Perhaps 'enjoy' is too strong a verb. Even in the best of circumstances, _Fearless_ , like other brainless reality shows, merely gives his mind a short respite.

These are not the best of circumstances.

Whenever Gai takes a sip of his beer, he can see the chafing on the other man's wrists from the heavy-duty shackles they use to keep him from killing himself through sheer bullheadedness.

An idiot on the screen grins from ear to ear after nearly offing himself. Kakashi imagines him in green. Then he imagines that the beer can is Gai's neck. It crumples satisfyingly in his grip, and he wishes he had another empty can. He wishes he wasn't so angry.

(One would think that, with his extensive experience, Kakashi would deal okay with being the one who stays when others leave.)

Now the can is his own neck, and he cannot let go. That's his problem, his shrink informs him, during his mandated sessions — letting go.

A minute passes, or maybe an hour. Somehow, he remembers to breathe. Gai pries his fingers from the ruin of metal in his hand. He is gentle — so unbearably gentle that Kakashi wants to scream, but he can feel the anger slipping from him as suddenly as it had erupted.

If Kakashi were anyone other than himself, he might ask Gai to promise not to do this again. Not to be another participant in the parade of people-who-leave-Kakashi.

If Gai were anyone other than himself, Kakashi wouldn't have to.

But they are who they are, and Kakashi doesn't know which he would find the more devastating answer — yes or no.


End file.
